"Is there really anyone here?" Meiru wondered, peering into the warehouse. She and Enzan had been sent emails from Meijin telling them to fight a virus attack at this location, but it looked like it had been deserted for years. The two Net Saviors stepped just inside the front doorway to get a better look around, but there was still nobody in sight. "Maybe this is the wrong address?" When she went to look at her PET, Meiru noticed where they'd stopped. "That's weird. Why are there x-es on the—" A sofa-like chair popped out of the ground, knocking them both to a seat on it. Before either of them could escape, seatbelts clicked over their waists. "I see," Meiru sighed.

"What's going—" The rest of Enzan's question was cut off in a scream as the floor dropped out from under them. Meiru's skirt was long enough that it wasn't lifting up that much, but instinct made her put her hands over her lap.

"Yaito," Meiru said as explanation once they'd come to a halt.

"What does she need all this for?" Enzan asked incredulously as they started moving forward.

"The less you think about it, the better you'll feel," Meiru told him as they sped faster, reaching a glass tunnel that showcased the deep-sea creatures swimming just above them. After flying past enough undersea sights that neither Net Savior was entirely sure where they were anymore, they started slowing to a halt. Just above them was a large submarine, part of its belly peeling back to reveal a rectangular slot. Their seats rose up to fit through it.

Kaita and Mary were already seated next to them, staring in wonder at their new companions. "You really did fetch them," Mary said with amazement.

"Welcome aboard the Yaito-Mako Mark II," greeted a brown-haired maid to their side. The mistress of the ship hopped off her seat to get a better look at her new guests.

"Your face!" Triumphantly, Yaito pointed at Enzan and said, "Finally, after all these years, I've gotten the one-up on you!"

"Since when is this a contest?"

"Since you never come to see me!"

Enzan looked partly exasperated, partly clueless. "When have you ever wanted me to visit you?"

Yaito huffed, "This whole time, of course! I've waited and waited and you never drop by!"

"Did you ever admit that to my face? Because I don't remember hearing anything of the sort."

"Subtext," Yaito stated. She turned to Meiru. "But, anyway, why didn't you tell me about these kids? They're adorable!"

"I didn't think you'd know about them," Meiru said, a sheepish smile creeping onto her face. "We've only just gotten to know them, ourselves. Anyway, how's high school?"

"Oh, you know. Boring, stuffy, et cetera. I haven't gotten out of Kingland in ages!" Yaito jumped back into her seat. "Which is why we're going to find some treasure!"

Enzan looked skeptical. Considering he'd never been dragged on one of Yaito's escapades before, Meiru supposed it was to be expected. "Where?" she asked.

Yaito explained, "Rumor has it there's a ruin right between South Ameroupe and the South Pole. But! You can't see it with your eyes. And even sonar doesn't pick it up! There's only one thing that works on it... wireless technology. People who sail near it say their PETs pick up a wireless connection, but there's nothing around to cause it. And they can't actually access the Internet with it. So it follows that there's something under the water, even if we can't pick it up."

"It still sounds like magic to me," Turboman said, unconvinced. "There's no way we can actually go inside!"

"One man's magic is another man's science," Yaito said confidently.

"Besides, isn't this totally awesome?!" Ring asked her friend, bouncing around him.

"Yeah!" Kaita agreed.

"I guess," Turboman said, crossing his arms.

"Yaito-sama!" the brown-haired maid called. "We're approaching the site!"

"Wonderful!" Yaito lifted her PET arm. "Glyde, found anything?"

"Yes, Yaito-sama," Glyde said. "I am registering a connection with the ruin's network."

"Me too!" Ring said. "This is so awesome!"

"What a strange protocol," Blues commented, examining the available information about the connection.

"It's a wonder we can even pick this network up, much less connect to it," Roll agreed, giving it some scrutiny of her own.

"Tell me when it's strongest, Glyde!" Yaito ordered, turning to a redheaded maid next. "And prepare the Network Sonar!"

"Network Sonar?" repeated Kaita, confused.

"If the only thing it gives off is a connection, that may be related to the method used to cloak it from all other forms of detection," Enzan explained. "So using the strength of that network to map the area will probably give us a good idea of what the actual ruin looks like. Right?" Meiru stifled her giggle with a hand—Enzan was probably right on board with this whole idea now, but he would never admit to any enthusiasm.

"Right," Yaito admitted grudgingly.

"Yaito-sama, it's the strongest right here!" Glyde said.

"Stop!" Yaito ordered. "Launch the Network Sonar!"

The brown-haired maid and a few others had produced a large, bulky instrument. "Network Sonar, launch!" the brown-haired maid called. Meiru and the other Netbattlers clustered around the display as it began to produce a series of dots. "According to this readout, there should be an area perfect for parking the Yaito-Mako right here," the brown-haired maid said, pointing out the bottom left of the display. "With your permission, of course..."

"Go ahead," Yaito said. The brown-haired maid swiftly returned to her position, giving orders with practiced ease. It was then that Meiru realized where she'd seen this maid: all those years ago, she'd been in charge of Yaito's more interesting vehicles, just like now. Meiru didn't have much more time to reflect on that; she braced herself as they began to drop down. "Actually, once you're down there, scan again," Yaito suggested. "It would be great if we could get further in."

"Roger," the brown-haired maid said. They were falling for a moment longer; then, they eased to a halt. The next scan revealed a swarm of dots; "There may be an opening just ahead," the maid reported after she'd gotten a look for herself. "May I proceed?"

"Of course," Yaito said. As they floated ahead, the faint sunlight disappeared completely. But what replaced it was much more immediate. "Are those lights?" Yaito wondered as they continued forward. "Go up!" 'Going up' wasn't completely possible; the Yaito-Mako surfaced in a room whose light was issuing from stone cups carved around its perimeter. Meiru could completely understand why Yaito's next reaction was, "No way."

"See, Turboman?" Ring asked as the hatch opened and Yaito and Kaita hurried out onto the stone floor, followed by the others. "It's really real! Now what were you saying about it being impossible?"

Enzan was the last out. "Someone's beaten us here," he said.

"What?!" Yaito asked indignantly. "It's a hidden ruin in the middle of nowhere!"

"Exactly. Why are the lights on?" Yaito opened her mouth to retort, but Enzan had a point; her peeved look was replaced by concern. Meiru looked around for entrances and found a man and a woman standing on the other end of the room. They looked like the sort to follow crazy rumors even without anything like Yaito's whims; they were dressed in black T-shirts bearing a strange symbol and black parachute pants held up by suspenders.

"A little early for Halloween, isn't it?" she called to them, drawing the attention of the rest of the group.

"These aren't costumes!" the woman said in heavily-accented Japanese. "We dress as the ancient people of Mu did!"

"We eat as the ancient people ate! Sleep as the ancient people slept!" enthused the man. Like the woman, he also had a heavy accent.

"That has nothing to do with this!" the woman snapped before returning her attention to Meiru and the other Netbattlers. "You're just going to have to turn your sub around, because the Ancient Chalice of Mu is ours!"

"Not a chance!" Yaito exclaimed. "If it's treasure, it's mine!"

"Besides, the other Solarites will be coming back for us, and you're blocking the way," the man pointed out.

"Tough!" Yaito said, her nose in the air. "I don't know who you think you are, anyway -"

"Gregorio!" the man introduced. "And that's Fuega!"

"I wasn't actually asking," Yaito said, but Gregorio continued on over her.

"We're members of the Solarites, and we're dedicated to resurrecting the culture of Mu -"

"- And we're not letting you have the Ancient Chalice of Mu!" Fuega interrupted. "This is a race now! There's no way you'll find it first!"

"We'll see about that!" Yaito shouted. There were two doorways at the back of the room; the Solarites took the right one. "We're splitting up," she announced next.

Meiru smiled as a thought occurred to her. "Kaita-kun, Mary-chan, why don't you come with me?"

Mary looked surprised, while Kaita said, "Sure!"

With a wink, Meiru told Yaito and Enzan, "We'll just leave you two alone to catch up!"

As Meiru and the others headed for the left doorway, she grinned as Yaito indignantly yelled after them, "What's that supposed to mean?!"

The doorway led to a hallway, which smelled very musty—to be expected when it was surrounded by water, Meiru supposed. Its walls were also covered in what appeared to be a mural, showing the vague shapes of people dressed similarly to the Solarites. Hieroglyphs lined the top of the wall, but Meiru found them more confusing. She watched the left mural as it told its story; it showed a platoon of sword-wielding people. The army left behind a group of people who had turned their backs on them. They spread throughout the globe, panel after panel showing them slaughtering anyone who stood in their way with gargantuan soldiers at their sides and raising up massive cities in their wake.

"What a barbaric people..." Mary said. Meiru had to agree. At the end of the hallway, the warriors ascended to a massive, saucerlike shape; they landed on top of it and were welcomed with a great celebration. "But why hasn't anyone ever heard of these Mu people before?" Mary asked, coming to a halt. Meiru stopped to listen, and soon heard Kaita running back to join her. "I know that this site was hidden, but where are the cities? Shouldn't we carry some of their influence?"

"Hey, you're right!" Kaita realized. "If they were so strong, how come they're not still ruling over us?"

"I'm guessing you've only just started covering ancient history," Meiru said. "There were lots of civilizations like this—superior to all others, and able to spread to encompass a huge part of the world. But they all overstretched themselves, or fell prey to internal problems, or just had a few bad years... and that was all it took for someone else to move in and take over, if they didn't just collapse on their own." She looked back over at the feasting, singing people in the mural. "This group was certainly more powerful than any civilization in the history books, but that doesn't mean it was invulnerable. When the other people took over, they probably pulled the cities down and stamped out the Mu culture."

"So they'd vanish without a trace..." Meiru and the other two looked solemnly at the mural. "I guess we should look at them as a warning," Mary continued. "The way you put it, this could even happen to us, if we aren't careful."

Meiru hadn't meant it that way. But as she contemplated the celebration in the mural, she saw Mary's point—hadn't there been plenty like it, in her own time? "You know, you're right," she said. "Even now, we can't overextend ourselves. And we can't ever think we're too advanced for something like this to happen to us..." Ruefully, she said, "It must be hard to lead a nation, huh?"

"It sounds like way too much worrying," Kaita said, making a face. "Yuck!"

"And what if the popular opinion is that the nation should overextend itself?" Mary asked. "The leader has to listen to his people, doesn't he?"

"Or else they won't like him," Ring piped in. "And then, it's off with his head!"

"Even if it'll ultimately lead to those people's downfall," Meiru finished. "I bet that's what happened to Mu. Everyone wanted to keep conquering and keep holding onto what they conquered until their civilization fell apart around their ears. It's sort of like what happened to Rome—though you guys aren't there yet, I'm sure," she said.

"You sure know a lot about history, Meiru-san!" Kaita said.

"I just pay attention in class," Meiru laughed. "Everyone would know their history if they studied!" After taking one last look at the unsuspecting revelers in the mural, she walked on, Kaita and Mary on either side.

The next room had a shimmering, orange floor, though it still felt like the same stone underfoot. There were a pair of chairs made out of blue stone, though they were marked with symbols and were patterned in orange energy. What was most interesting was the pair of statues, or what looked like they were intended to be statues. They were like small obelisks, touching the top of the ceiling; and were delicately crafted out of blue, transparent energy, veined with orange energy like the solid chairs were. Meiru stepped closer to one; when she was almost touching her nose to it, she could see minute channels in the surface, most narrower than a grain of rice. She looked over to see Kaita hesitantly reaching a hand out toward the other statue. "Kaita-kun, don't—!"

She wasn't quite fast enough, though Kaita certainly pulled his hand back quickly. "Ow!" Meiru ran over, concerned. There wasn't any blood, but Kaita's fingertips looked a little swollen after their run-in with the energy. "It's weird," he said, staring at the injury. "It felt like there was nothing there, but -!"

"What is this?" Meiru wondered, looking back at the statue. "If it doesn't look solid or feel solid, but it can still do that..." She looked down at her PET. "Roll, does this have anything to do with the system that cloaks the ruin?"

"It's part of the network," Roll explained. "I still can't plug into it, but the signal spikes in this room."

"Guys," Mary said worriedly, "the floor..." Meiru looked down to see it had turned red beneath them.

"I don't think it recognized you," Meiru said, backing toward the other end and pulling Kaita along with her. "Mary, hurry over! We can't get—" The mini-obelisk widened into a wall of the blue energy, blocking Mary off. "—separated," Meiru finished weakly.

"Oh..." Mary looked around worriedly. "Perhaps I should start trying to catch up to Enzan-san and Yaito-chan..."

Meiru had to think hard before making her decision. As a Net Savior, she knew that Mary's well-being was her responsibility in any case dealing with substantiation—which this certainly seemed to be. "There wasn't anything back there that seemed like an unsprung trap, but I can't say that about the side Enzan and Yaito went down," Meiru decided. "Roll, can you call them?"

"I'm sorry, Meiru-chan," Roll said regretfully. "I haven't figured out how to use this network. I can perceive it, but I'm completely unable to interact with it..."

"It's okay, Roll," Meiru said. "But that means you should probably stay near the submarine, Mary-chan."

"Seriously?!" Ring fumed. "We've gotten all this way, and now we have to go back?! Of all the nerve!"

"I understand, Meiru-san," Mary said. "Besides, this was still very interesting!"

"But it was too short!" Ring complained as Mary began to leave.

"Good luck, Meiru-san, Kaita-kun!" With that, Mary left. Meiru knew it had to be pretty disappointing, but at least the younger girl was handling it well.

In the meantime, the wall was still not shrinking, and the floor continued to be colored red. "I guess all we can do is move on and hope for the best," Meiru said.

"Yeah. I feel really bad about Mary-chan, though..." The next room was lined with giant statues in the walls, and many of the stone tiles were shaped like the symbol Fuega and Gregorio had been wearing. "They're just like the huge soldiers from the mural!" Kaita realized, thankfully not touching anything as he stared up at them in wonder.

It was what was further ahead that caught Meiru's attention; square, gold-helmeted heads were mounted in front of a raised stone tablet on the lower level of the room. "Duo...?" She edged closer to get a better look. But it couldn't have been a representation of Duo; the helmet was similar, but the heads had mustaches.

"Careful, Meiru-chan!" At Roll's warning, Meiru realized that there was nothing stopping her from falling at least a story and landing in the dark waters lapping against the platform below.

"Thanks, Roll." There were also no railings on the stairs. "They really didn't care much about safety here, did they?" Meiru wondered, carefully making her way down.

"Or about making sure people could get from one end to the other," Kaita added, following Meiru down. Pointing across the water, he said, "Look at all those platforms!" Besides the one they were on, there were quite a few both across the room and behind them.

"There must be another level that got washed away," Meiru rationalized. She couldn't imagine there being any other way to get across; the room was just too large. "Or maybe it's ceremonial?"

"Maybe." Kaita bounded back up the stairs before Meiru could warn him to take them slower. "There's more of that writing here, too, look!" Meiru began to climb the stairs carefully. "Hurry, it'll go away!" With a sigh—sometimes, it was far too easy to notice that Kaita was twelve—Meiru sped up. She made her way to the top in time to see some orange-lit characters zip by.

"I didn't miss it," she said before Kaita could complain. "But I wonder why it showed up all of a sudden?"

"Dunno," Kaita said. "Let's go further!" A circular stone gateway led into the next hall, which was also fairly spacious. At the far end of it, Meiru could see a huge boulder rolling out of the gloom toward them. "Oh, come on," Kaita said.

It was so ridiculously cliché that Meiru understood Kaita's disbelief completely. "Couldn't they have come up with something more original?" she sighed, putting her hands on her hips. "Like setting the boulder on fire."

"Or making the boulder shoot lasers," Kaita suggested.

"A laser boulder... That would be a pretty cool band name, wouldn't it!" Meiru realized.

"Yeah!" Kaita looked back at the approaching boulder. "This thing could kill us, couldn't it?"

Lame as it was, it was still made of solid stone. "...Probably." Once the novelty had been replaced by alarm, Meiru turned and ran, Kaita keeping pace and screaming just as loudly as she was. They returned to the statue hall and immediately saw their salvation: the stairway down to the lower level. The two quickly ran to the halfway point and took a seat as the ground began to shake.

In seconds, the boulder had passed by and slammed into the wall. A fat peg shot out of it, propelling the boulder into the water. Meiru shielded her face and hair with her arms as a wave of water flew up. "We must be getting pretty far in for something like that to show up," Kaita said, watching the boulder slowly sink down.

Meiru nodded, staring across the water at the statues mounted on the other end of the room as her mind caught up with her. "I get the feeling there isn't any kind of treasure room here, though," she said after a moment. "This all seems to be focused around soldiers, not the upper class."

"So Enzan-san and Yaito-chan must know where it is!" Kaita said. "All we have to do now is find them!"

01101100011000010111001101110100011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101

Yaito was feeling pretty pleased with herself. Though it was a little disappointing that she didn't have Meiru with her to gush over the oodles and oodles of jewelry she'd found in the latest room she'd explored, it had left her with a new ring set with three rubies in the shape of the funny crest that seemed to be all over the ruin.

("And you're going to give that to a museum, right?" Enzan had asked her pointedly, interrupting her admiration of how well it fit on her finger.

Yaito had found the necklace missing the most gems so she could lift it up and decide, "I'll let this one go, and we can call it even!" before going right back to admiring her ring. Enzan's exasperated sigh went ignored.)

Now, the brightly-colored path - lit by strange, transparent lights of every color that floated in the air-led to one room flanked by a pair of huge statues of warriors. "This must be it!" Yaito exclaimed, rushing into the room's center. "That cup is mine!"

"It is a chalice," corrected the Solarite woman's voice—Fuega, Yaito recalled. The black-clad woman had entered from the other end of the room. "Nothing like a cup."

"Do you even know what 'chalice' means?" Enzan asked.

"You don't even know what you're looking for," Yaito realized, her cheer quickly returning. In the meantime, she spotted what had to be the Ancient Chalice of Mu—it was in plain sight, sitting between two chairs on the far side of the room. "You guys don't stand a chance!"

"I think not!" Gregorio entered the room, but what was following him made Yaito pay a little more attention. "It is you who won't be standing!" It was a stone statue, just like the ones outside—but this one was walking after its master, halting behind Fuega and Gregorio.

"Solarman is specially programmed to interact with Mu networks and objects," Fuega explained, patting the statue's arm. "He will be more than enough to deal with you, and you are defenseless!" The statue lifted its flat blade in a silent cheer. Yaito wasn't feeling nearly so cheerful.

"Who wants this so badly, anyway?" Enzan asked them. "You don't know what it looks like, yet you came all the way out here for it?"

"Our Exalted Leader demands treasure," Gregorio explained.

"Then take some of that jewelry back there," Yaito told them. "I told you, this one's mine."

"Baubles are not the kind of treasure he seeks. It will please him, but it will not please him," Fuega explained.

"The trinkets, little pay bonus. The Ancient Chalice, large bonus... large enough to finance vacation," Gregorio explained.

"Vacation? Isn't this the vacation?" Yaito said.

"Oh, no. Do you know how many ruins we have visited for our Exalted Leader? Believe me, this is one of the tamer visits. We deserve a break," Fuega said.

"First, we take the Ancient Chalice of Mu. Then, we deliver it to the Exalted Leader. And then..." With passion, Gregorio said, "Then, we go to Panarama."

"Well, why don't you go next year?" Enzan asked.

"Next... year?" The Solarites stared cluelessly at him.

"Think about it. Next year, you'll have saved up even more money," Enzan explained. "You'll have built up more vacation hours. And there'll always be some other treasure to dig up, so even your boss'll still be pleased."

To his partner, Gregorio enthused, "With more time and resources, we can see everything in Panarama! We can even see favorites two times!"

Fuega nodded. "It only makes sense to find another treasure!"

Enzan cut in, "So we can take this one."

"Yes!" Fuega elbowed Gregorio in the ribs. "I mean, no!"

"We will take this one and the next one!" she said triumphantly. "Not only will we get more bonuses and more praise from the Exalted Leader, but we'll still build up the vacation hours! We can make two trips to Panarama!"

"That's... not what I was saying," Enzan said, somewhat baffled by the Solarites' thought processes.

"But I have to admit, it was a nice try," Yaito conceded.

"Enough of this," Fuega said. "Solarman, get rid of them!"

"If he can do it, why can't we?" Yaito lifted her PET arm. "Glyde, get in there!"

"It's impossible, Yaito-sama," Glyde said as the statue lumbered over. "I can't just reprogram myself at the drop of a hat!"

"That's not fair!" complained Yaito as she and Enzan ran for it; while he ran straight back, she veered off to the side. "But if you're doing that, I'm taking your treasure!" She knew that as long as they eventually made it out of the room, they had the Yaito-Mako waiting for them; a pile of stone couldn't possibly get inside. Besides, heading for the cup—or Chalice, if they had to call it that—meant that she was putting a weird pillar between her and the cumbersome robot, which would hopefully slow it down some.

Both thoughts were dashed when the statue's sword glowed purple before shearing straight through the pillar, causing it to evaporate into thin air. Yaito grabbed the Chalice, but was fenced in by the monstrous statue. It lifted its arm even as Yaito held the Chalice in front of her, hoping that Solarman wouldn't risk hitting what his Operators were after—

There was a flash of purple at the stone soldier's shoulder, and suddenly the whole arm tumbled backwards and away. Yaito blinked at the fallen arm in astonishment before seeing Mary, already heading for the door, and Enzan, now equipped with a spear whose tip was lit up by the same purple energy. He looked rather handsome to Yaito when he was doing the whole action-hero thing. "Enzan…!"

"Don't just stand there!" he shouted, prompting Yaito to run past Solarman's statue and to the door.

"Plug out, Solarman!" Gregorio called just before Enzan's next swing took the statue's head off.

With the statue holding still, Yaito called, "Hurry up!" The two of them wasted no time catching up with Mary, who was about halfway down the hall. Meiru and Kaita were at its end. "Turn around and tell the Yaito-Mako to be ready! We've got to get out of here!" Yaito yelled.

"Will do!" Meiru said, turning around. Yaito grabbed hold of Mary's hand and half-pulled her along until they were back in the room they'd started in, Enzan keeping an eye on what was going on behind them.

The Yaito-Mako's engine was running when Yaito leapt in, pulling Mary after her. When she turned to see what was going on outside, she saw another statue running at them before Enzan threw the spear at it. As he jumped into the submarine, Yaito yelled, "Dive already!" The statue easily dodged, but it was distracted for just long enough that they were sinking as it arrived above them.

It took the group a moment to catch their breath. "That was weird," Kaita said, looking out the window as they pulled away from what looked once again like empty ocean.

"Weird?!" Yaito asked indignantly. "I take you to a hidden ruin and all you can say is that it's weird?!"

"It was cool, Yaito-chan," Meiru said. "It's just... well, your idea of 'cool' can be a little overwhelming sometimes."

This cheered Yaito up. She laughed, "Of course! The grander, the better!"